Archive for the ‘Child’ Category
Movie: Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic (2008) - Watchable
On August 09, 2008 in Magic, Child, Family, Romance, Bollywood, Comedy, Movie
Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic was a movie made under the banner of Yash Raj Films (produced by Aditya Chopra and Kunal Kohli) starring Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherji, and a smaller role by Amisha Patel and Rishi Kapoor. The movie is written and directed by Kunal Kohli (no doubt an attempt to try to re-create the success of his earlier movie Hum Tum (2004) starring Saif and Rani). The movie has some nice music by Shankar Ehsaan Loy (with the ‘Nihaal Ho Gaayi’ song being catchy and popular; the ‘Lazy Lamhe’ song did not become so popular even though it had a lot of eye candy). The movie had some great performances by the kids, by Rani Mukherji (given her closeness to the producer, this would have been expected though); the performance by Saif Ali Khan was marred by the fact that the movie script almost made him change his character in the space of 15 minutes.
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Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke (1993) - Great movie
On July 17, 2008 in Melody, Video, Child, Song, Romance, Bollywood, Classic, Comedy, Movie
Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke was a delightful movie, no doubts whatsoever. A story that combined a love story with the sensitive elements of trying to bring up kids who have lost their parents was superb. The movie had some excellent performances by the lead pair of Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla; with other noteworthy performances by Dalip Tahil, and the 3 kids (Master Sharokh, Kunal Khemu and Baby Ashrafa) turned in some great performances. The movie was released in 1993, directed by Mahesh Bhat and produced by Tahir Hussain.
The movie was written by Robin Bhatt, Aamir Khan and Sujit Sen, and had music by Nadeem-Shravan; lyrics were by Sameer. It was a fairly successful hit (although the Best Actor award for the year went to Shahrukh Khan for Baazigar). What lent the story great appeal was the sensitive treatment of the behaviour of the kids, how the eldest moves towards maturity and wants to start getting treatment like an adult; how the kids understand through an example that they should treat others the same way they want to get treated, and how through love and understanding, it is possible to bond with children (even those who have had the emotional scarring of losing their parents).
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Bhootnath - a mis-mash of different emotions
On June 21, 2008 in Culture, Video, Child, Drama, Song, Movie, Values, Society
I watched Bhootnath just the day after having watched Jannat just the previous day, and given that my impression of Jannat was not good, any movie would have been good. But Bhootnath was a movie that impressed in parts. The Director, Vivek Sharma, tried to take many human emotions into the movie; thus taking the movie into 3 separate parts - the first part where the ghost appears to be evil and a danger to whoever tries to enter the property; the second part where the child makes friend with the ghost and turns him into a proper civilized person-like character with human emotions; and the third part where there is an attempt to throw in a lot of tear-jerkering emotional scene so that the ghost can disappear and everything can turn out normal. In the end, these attempts to make the movie cater to many interests put a lot of strain on the overall movie, and my feeling is that it did not turn out as well as could be. The movie takes on a heavy social issue of how children go abroad, and become of that land.
The movie is geared towards kids, and that was clear when I saw the songs. They were all songs designed to appeal to children, and it did seem a bit different to see songs that had a lot of kids in them; but most of the audience was adults, so was wondering whether there was a mismatch in terms of the advertising of the movie versus the intended effect of the advertising. The movie has a cast that is capable of some great things - Amitabh Bachchan, Aman Siddiqui, Juhi Chawla, Rajpal Yadav, Satish Shah, Priyanshu Chatterjee and Shahrukh Khan. Amitabh Bachchan gives a good role, but one feels that in the middle of the movie, he gets overshadowed by the kid, and then in the latter half of the movie, Shahrukh Khan seems to get most of the attention (Shahrukh Khan had a role that was more than a guest appearance, but less than a full role). Rajpal Yadav was very thoroughly under-used in the movie, getting 2 very brief scenes (almost like a cameo).
Kya Aap Panchvi Pass se Tez Hain - Not doing well
On May 14, 2008 in Star Plus, Child, Learn, Contest, Reality Show, TV, Competition, Talent, Bollywood
One was reading an article in the newspapers about how this much awaited show is running into problems with its sponsors; apparently the show is not drawing enough viewership and the sponsors are applying pressure to reform the format of the show. The show, even though based on an international show, ‘Are (confirm)’, has been modified to the Indian context, with a lot more celebrity power thrown in. Hence, even 2 ads of the show that I saw talking about some future episodes of the show had 2 more TV celebrities shown - as an example, one of the episodes had the 2 main leads of the drama ‘Vidaai’ appearing on the show along with most of the cast.
This is apparently something that the sponsors seem to be fulminating against; they believe that the show is focusing a bit extra on the star quotient (and these were minor TV stars, not big Bollywood stars who can be expected to lend more glamour to the show). This is also in contrast to the previous Kaun Banega Crorepati since the focus of the show remained the questions and not more about the celebrities. With a limited time format, and some focus on the star power, the show is losing out and just not generating the required viewership (although when the show was proposed, there was worry that the show will generate so much interest that the IPL matches going on at the same time - evening at 8 PM) would lose out on some of the viewership.
Taare Zameen Par - A moving tale
On April 18, 2008 in Values, Melody, Child, Character, Family, Bollywood, Classic, Movie
Taare Zameen Par is a delightful movie. At the same time Shahrukh Khan was coming out with a hit nonsense Om Shanti Om, Aamir Khan came out with this gem of a movie that was a heart-shaker. At first release, a lot of people saw this as a serious movie, about the passion of a person for making the type of movie that he believes in; and the first reaction was the worry about whether this movie was a success. That got answered soon, the movie was a big success; families who went to see the movie had only good things to say for it, and the movie gained tremendous word of mouth publicity. You could hardly find anybody being critical of this movie, given the tremendous performances by the young actor, by the actress playing his mother, and by Aamir (and how often do you see a star not even appearing on the screen till the interval ?).
The movie has a fairly simple story line, and is well handled by the combination of a good story by Amole Gupte (who was almost the Director before Aamir took it away), great music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy (Ehsaan Noorani, Loy Mendonca, Shankar Mahadevan), and lyrics by Prasoon Joshi. The music lends a great amount of support to the movie, with the ‘Meri Maa’ song having moved many people to express themselves emotionally.
